


The Next Choice

by shipatfirstsight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipatfirstsight/pseuds/shipatfirstsight
Summary: This is what happens next.Or: Rey is not ready to give up on Ben and sets out to bring him back.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 9
Kudos: 58





	The Next Choice

**Author's Note:**

> All I can write are fix-it fics right now apparently

This is what happens next.

Rey leaves Tatooine. She has lived too much, seen too much, to exile herself on another desert planet She won’t do it. Tatooine wasn’t the start of the story, and it would not be her end.

_I grew up here_ , Anakin tells her, _I was a slave here. My story began here, but it was not a good beginning._

_I couldn’t wait to leave here,_ Luke puts in, _but it was kinder to me than it was to my father or to Leia._

“Leia?” she asks, knowing there’s a story there, wanting to understand the oppressive air of this planet; sorrow and hopelessness that seem to hang in the air.

_I was enslaved here, too_. _It is...not a happy place_ , Leia muses. _We won in the end, but part of the victory was in leaving this place._

Ben does not speak to her. She cannot feel him. She wants to ask if he is with them, but she has not yet been able to admit, even to herself, that he is really gone.

He was never on this planet. She will not find him here.

She misses him with a deep ache that is deeper in grief. Deeper than sorrow. She cannot cry, she cannot grieve. Her soul has been cleaved in two, ripped apart from the seams, and she is left to try to weather the damage. And she cannot find him.

She goes to Naboo. The Jedi with her are silent at the choice, but she feels them there, though they offer no spoken comfort, perhaps waiting for her to ask for it. She finds herself at a lake house where she feels such overwhelming love that it hurts and comforts in equal measure. Anakin’s own sense of loss fills her when she finds him standing on the pirch one day, looking out over the lake. She can almost see the woman he loved, walking with him on the banks of that lake.

_Padmé_ , he tells her. _She would have liked you, Rey._

“Is she not there with you?” she asks, forcing the words out, unable to ask if he is there either.

He shakes his head. _She is gone from me. I don’t know where._

“Don’t you miss her? Don’t you wish you could be with her?” Her own questions, her own wishes, easier to ask of him than of herself.

_No one is ever really gone, Rey_. _I can feel her here still. Perhaps one day I will find where she has gone and be reunited with her, but for now I am needed here._

“Did you ever,” she stops, breathes, finishing her question without the ring of accusation she’d heard in her voice, “did you ever talk to B--to him?”

Anakin turns to face her fully, unbearable sorrow written on his face. _Yes, when he was younger. I didn’t realise until later...he couldn’t hear me. Or any of us. We reached out for him and thought he heard us and he never did. We eventually stopped trying. I think Palpatine was blocking me out, blocking all of us out. We should have tried harder, shouldn’t have stopped trying. If we had realised...but we did not know._

“You never spoke to me, either,” she states, unable to keep the combined sympathy and accusation from her tone this time. “Not until you had a use for me. I know how he must have felt, alone with no support. I felt it from him.”

_Rey, you were hidden from us too. You would not have been hidden from Palpatine either if we had been able to find you. We didn’t even know to look. I’m sorry, for what you and he endured, each on your own. The Force gave you each other though. Doesn’t that comfort you?_

“No. _No._ He’s gone and we never got...we never got anything. Blips of happiness together, only to have it all ripped away in the end. And now I’m just as alone as when I started.”

_You have friends. You could return to them._

Rey shakes her head, a twinge of a different kind of sorrow going through her. Loss for what was still there, but which she no longer felt capable of being a part of. “I miss them, but they wouldn’t understand. They’d want me to be...someone I don’t know if I’ll ever find again. Too much has happened. I’ve lost too much since this all started to be that girl again. They’re glad that he is gone from the galaxy. They won’t understand what his loss--what his death,” she finally voices, finally admitting that truth, “means to me.”

_You’re grieving_ , he reassures, _so_ _let yourself grieve. But one day you might want to rejoin them and the new government they are creating._

“I’ve always been alone, cut off from living people. I’m used to it _._ It...it’s easier for me this way. It’s harder to be around people---they won’t understand what he did for me, for all of us. They might not care. It feels private what he did, even if all of you know. It feels--just for me. I’m afraid if I tell them it won’t change anything and they will hate me for...for lov--for caring about him.”

_So you’d rather be alone and allowed to keep it to yourself so they will not make you feel guilty for what you felt for him._

“Yes.”

_Then let yourself really grieve him, Rey. Let yourself admit that you love him. You have to if you ever want to move past this stage._

“What if I don’t want to move past this stage? If I admit that he’s really gone, if I accept it, if I admit how I feel about him still, I’ll lose him and I don’t _want_ to lose him.” But admitting that is enough. The confession unleashes what she had kept inside and all at once she is sobbing, sinking to the ground and hugging her knees to her chest and _sobbing_ for him and what could have been. 

“Why couldn’t you help him?” she cries, even as she leans into the arms now holding her, Leia’s soothing murmurs filling her ears.

Eventually, the torrent stops and she eases her stiff body up from her crouched position. What she had feared does not happen--she has not let him go. She still feels the sharp pain of loss, but that cold empty feeling is gone allowing her to feel, if not better, at least less guilty for not being able to even mourn the man who had...saved her, maybe even loved her, or who could have loved her.

“Where is he?” she finally asks. “Where is Ben? Does he not--does he not want to see me?”

_Oh, Rey. No, he is not with us_ , Leia answers, _We don’t know where he went._

“You don’t know?” she asks, disbelief filling her voice.

_His body disappeared. He should have joined us. He knew how to. He should be here. He is gone, though, and we cannot find him._

“You’ve been looking for him, though?”

_Yes._

“Why didn’t you tell me--no, never mind. I understand, you were waiting for me to ask. Where could he be if he is not with you?”

No one speaks, each absorbed in their own thoughts. All she can think of is Ben; Ben not even removed from the loneliness and isolation that had plagued them both; Ben alone in death as he was in life.

“Is the Force punishing him? For the choices he made,” she clarifies. She hates the thought of it, even as she recognises that many, including her friends, including herself at one point, would consider that justice, even if it is a fate _she_ , now, cannot accept for him.

_No_ , Anakin reassures her firmly. _I would have deserved that fate far more than Ben. I spent longer in the dark--I did worse things. I was not conflicted through it. I accepted the dark when Padmé died, because of me_ . _If anyone would have deserved to be cut off and alone it was me, and the Force allowed me to be here. I made one good choice in twenty years, to spare my son from Palpatine, and it was enough to save me. Surely his choice to save you would have spared him the fate you are imagining._

_What if--_ Luke finally says, clearly thinking and considering. 

“What?” she asks when he falls silent and does not continue, impatient to hear his thoughts.

_It was no more than a rumour, we thought, for the longest time. A legend. But I saw references more than once and we know now that Ezra and Ahsoka found their way through it. Hmmm._ He looks to Yoda. _Could he be in the world between worlds?_

_Hmmm, maybe so_ , Yoda responds after a moment.

“What is it? What does that mean?”

Luke looks to her, consideringly. _He could be brought back. The Force would have allowed him to go there, allowing someone to reach in and pull him out one day._

“He could be alive again?” she asks, hardly daring to believe.

_If we can find a way in, maybe_ , Luke confirms. _Ezra and Ahsoka found one way, but it was destroyed when they escaped from Palpatine._

Rey does not need to think about it. To sort through the pros and cons. This choice is an easy one to make. “Then we will find a way.”

* * *

This is what happens next.

She goes searching, chasing every myth and rumour of the world between worlds, restoring destroyed texts as best she can. She finds more questions than answers at times; the information is often unclear, often contradictory, locations kept purposefully secret because of the power that the Jedi Order thought a Force user could gain if they achieved access to that plane. The dead Jedi, whose ages go back almost to the very start of the Jedi Order, help her as best they can to sift through fact and outright fiction. They do not have all the answers themselves, of course; that would be too easy. Too simple. Not every dead Jedi was among them; some had not know the way. Some tell her of masters that joined the Sith because the Sith did not restrict knowledge, but those former Jedi and any knowledge they acquired were lost to them as they were.

_We made many mistakes_ , Obi Wan says, more and more as time goes by. _We thought if we restricted what we didn’t want known, that the Force would pick our side. That we would win. We failed time and time again, caught up in our arrogance._

“Then I will find what they wrote,” she decides.

_Rey_ , Luke says, caution in his tone.

“Don’t,” she cuts in. “I cannot be governed by fear of them or of the dark side. I cannot live my life that way.”

_Do not become so desperate to save him that you allow it to alter who you are._

“Who I am in Palpatine’s granddaughter,” she reminds them, meeting the eyes of the ones who are corporeal. “You have shared story after story of the horrible things he did. That is my family's legacy. And I fought every day of my life against it, my own impulse towards the dark. I have always felt it there. It will not alter who I am, because that _is_ who I am. I will continue to choose to align myself with the light side as I have every day since I knew it was a choice.”

_Alright_ , Luke says, with a nod. _I’m sorry Rey_.

“Don’t. I understand, I just---I need you all to trust me to do this.” 

_We do, Rey_ , this from Obi Wan. _But intentions matter._

“Do you all think I’m being selfish?”

_Maybe,_ it is Leia that answers, _but I cannot begrudge your wish to help him, if help is what he needs._

* * *

So, this is what happens then.

She hunts for any hint of knowledge of the world between worlds, from any source. She travels through worlds full of light, worlds full of dark, and places where balance has been reached. She fights and trains with the help of the Jedi dead, learning and absorbing, though she continues in her mission.

Rey contacts her friends one day, comforted by their smiling greetings, their questions of when she will return to them. She has not spoken to them for months. They’ve all been busy, she knows, but she also knows that she has, in large part, been avoiding them. A thing easier to do when she has been jumping from planet to planet almost daily. 

“We need you,” they say. “We miss you,” they admit.

“I miss you too,” she answers, trying to smile, but feeling tears well up. She breathes, gathering her courage. “I need you, all of you in my life. Which is why I need to tell you what I’m doing.”

She tells them, then, almost everything she’d held back except for that which was really hers alone. But she shares what Ben had meant to her in the end. What he had done for her, for all of _them_ . The telling is hard, but necessary she sees, when Rose looks at her with new eyes, _understanding_ eyes while Poe and Finn still look like their processing. Poe is the most obviously _angry_ of the three of them, Finn the most shocked. 

“You loved him,” Rose states.

“I love him,” she admits. “I--we think he might be in the world between worlds.”

She spends long minutes explaining that, and all that they had found. They have to leave then, called away to fix one problem or another.

Later, they call her again.

Poe sighs. “We’ll let you know if we hear anything about the world between worlds, alright?”

“Thank you,” is all she can bring herself to say, even if it feels horrendously inadequate.

“I can’t pretend to understand, Rey,” he says after a moment of silence. “But we love you, and we trust you.”

She nods, finding herself fighting back tears once more. “Finn?” she asks, hesitantly. He has not said anything to her since she’d admitted everything.

“Rey,” he starts, stops, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you tell us? You know we--forever, no matter what. We love you.”

She chokes back a sob. “Alright. I love you all too, you know that right? This is just something I have to do.”

“We understand. Well, we’re trying to understand,” Finn says with a laugh, rubbing his hand over his head. “It might take some time to fully wrap our heads around, but we love you so we’ll try our best to. As long as you understand our own feelings about it.”

“I do,” she reassures. “I know there’s a part of him that only I ever got to see. I don’t expect you to trust him or even like him, or to ever forgive him. If we have to, we can live quietly. ”

“Saving you doesn’t change what he did, but it was a start,” Poe interjects, shaking his head. “He was my friend once, so I know who he can be. And I know we could use his help. Whether or not forgiveness comes from that...we’ll see. But, your feelings...we can give him a chance. We don’t want to lose you.”

“Thank you,” again is all she can say, and again it feels wholly inadequate. “I was afraid of losing you all if I told you. And I so didn’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t lose us Rey,” Rose reassures.

“Together until the end, whether or not we’re actually together,” Poe puts in.

“We might not fully understand, but you can always tell us anything and we’ll at least try.” This last is from Finn with a reassuring smile.

When she bids them goodbye, finally, she feels so much better and less alone that she regrets not telling them sooner.

_It might have been for the best_ , Leia puts in, when Rey voices her thoughts to her. _Maybe they needed the time and space to be able to even start to accept it._

* * *

Then, _then_ ,

They start to find answers, a trail to somewhere, and it all sounds, even to the most skeptical among her Jedi companions, like something right, _finally._ Every step in this direction lends to new answers. Until, step by step by step, she finds herself on a quiet planet facing a crumbling picture. 

_Be careful,_ Anakin advised. _When you go in, you go in alone. We do not know who you will hear. We will not be able to help you._

“I know,” she answers, simply are irrevocably. 

_Rey,_ Leia cuts in, just as she is about to enter, _thank you for doing this for my son._

“I am doing this for him. But it is not unselfish. I want him back for me, too, not just for him.”

_I know, but I can’t bring myself to be unhappy that someone selfishly wants Ben. That he has that._

“If I succeed in bringing him back, we will have each other, hopefully,” she breathes, and then steps through the door.

There are no voices. There is nothing when she enters, just resounding, unending silence. 

“Ben?” she calls out, breaking the unending silence, expecting him to answer immediately and surely. To nothing, to no end. No one and nothing answers her. 

And this is it then, she thinks, she will finally have to admit defeat and let him go regardless of her own feelings. “Ben?” she calls out, screaming it really, over and over, running forward. “Please,” she sobs, but pushes on.

“Ben?”

“Rey?” disbelief in evident in his voice even before she swings back around to find him, there, just like she remembers, unchanged by death and the months that separated them. “You found me,” he whispers, disbelief still ringing in his voice.

“I came for you,” she says, stalking back towards him, “because I love you. And you’re coming back with me.”

And then they’re both running, and he gathers her in his arms, and it feels like something she’s never known. Ben buries his face in her hair, and she squeezes him, trying to get closer to him. 

“I missed you,” he tells her, pulling back slightly to smile down at her, brushing a tear she hadn’t noticed away with his thumb.

“I love you, too,” he tells her, leaning down to press his forehead against hers. 

"Why didn't you join your family?" she can't help but ask.

"I didn't want to leave you," is his response, "at all. I had to, but..."

"But intentions matter. You weren't ready to leave."

He nods. "I knew what it would cost me to save you and I made that choice easily, but the thought of leaving you afterwards--it was selfish, but I didn't want to."

She twists a hand into his hair, pulling his lips to hers.

"I'm glad," she whispers between them before taking his lips with hers.

* * *

This is what happens next.

They walk out of the world between worlds together, hand in hand. 

She hadn’t realized in that world, though she certainly notices now, that he is completely naked, and she can’t help the startled laugh that escapes her lips. He looks down at himself, and releases a bark of laughter of his own.

It is the first time she has ever heard him laugh, and the sound stops her. She stares at him in a kind of awe. Ben looks at her quizzically, then shakes his head. 

“I feel light,” he says. “A burden I never knew was a burden is gone from me forever.”

With another smile of her own, she tugs him to the Falcon and finds him a pair of clothing, that although slightly short for his tall frame, does it’s job for now. Only then do Anakin, Luke, and Leia appear, as though they’d been giving them privacy.

Ben blushes from his neck over his face looking at his mother, as he hangs his head. 

“Mom,” he starts, but that’s before Leia gathers him in her arms, cradling his head as she had once cradled Rey’s.

_Don’t,_ Leia tells him. _You can apologize or asks for my forgiveness or both later and I will accept. But for now, let me be glad that I found my son._

He exhales shakily, nodding silently against his mother’s hand, and finally lets his arms wrap around her, holding her almost as tightly as he’d held Rey. “I missed you,” he tells her too, when she pulls away to let first Luke then Anakin gift him with hugs of their own.

Leia turns away, and Rey goes to her, placing a hand on her shoulder in comfort. Leia brings a hand up to cover hers, before turning back, having gained control of her emotions. 

_I missed you every day Ben_ , she tells him when Luke finishes ruffling his nephew’s hair. 

Ben turns back to her. “Mom, I’m so sor--”

_Not now_ , Leia reminds him, _I just needed you to know that I felt the loss of you._

He nods, accepting that, then walks back to Leia’s side, tugging her into a hug once more. “I felt the loss of you, too.” He takes Rey’s hand when he pulls away this time, linking their fingers together.

His family smiles at that before fading away. 

Flying with Ben is as easy as breathing.

* * *

What happens next would be boring to anyone but the two of them, she thinks. They land on another planet, and fall asleep in each others arms in easy comfort. She is exhausted, and needs the comfort of his arms around her, half afraid that if she sleeps, she will wake to find him gone once more. 

They kiss in the morning, long and slow and it feels like the first time and the second time. Like joining together, like an answer to questions she didn’t know needed to be asked. She wonders if all the kisses she plans to give him, that he plans to give to her, if it will always feel like this.

They fly back to the New Republic, and she watches Ben face Rose, Finn, and Poe, and them face him. Wary, all of them, until she breaks it, striding the distance between them, tugging Ben along with her. She releases his hand to throw her arms over her three friends, and they return the gesture, holding her close. Ben steps forward when they release each other, slowly offering his hand to Finn. Finn looks down at the hand, and Rey holds her breath. She won’t interfere in this, she _won’t…_

Finn extends his hand, clasping Ben’s in his. Rose and Poe follow suit, and Rose even offers him a small smile.

It’s not a lot, she knows, it’s not even healing, but it’s a start. A start to something, to a new world.

They are not always happy, but they are infrequently sad. They have battles to fight, still, but they have moments of joy.

Her life is spent with her friends and with Ben, first as a lover and finally as her husband and the father of her children. Her life is spent starting a new order with Ben’s help and the help of the Jedi who remain with them even still, training first Finn, then Jannah and her band of ex-stormtroopers, and then a Force sensitive boy that Finn remembers from Canto Bight, adding Force sensitive children and adults when they find them, training up their own children when they come of age. They try to correct the mistakes of the past, to forge something new. To not kill the past as Ben once wanted, but to learn from it and try to do better. 

* * *

This is what happens next.

They live their lives. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
